I have to admit it, I was never one for music theory. So, when I finally decided to play my instrument again after a prolonged break, and in addition, decided to take exams with ABRSM, I finally tricked myself into learning music theory. However, since I decided to take the exams in English, which is NOT my native language, I studied music theory using English literature.

Now, I am taking Grade 5 next Saturday. Since I got stuck with some topics, I asked my aunt how is a cellist and music teacher - And found out, that I actually do NOT know the words in my own language. She just told me most of them. Ooooooops!!!!!

Anyone in a similar situation?

Not with music since I first learnt to play as a child in England and have trouble with the French terms. With me it is childbirth that I don't have the words for in English (my mother tongue).

Yes....son learned definitions for musical terms in English for ABRSM, now he has to scramble to learn them all in Japanese (near enough is not good enough, has to be pretty much the EXACT time-hallowed word in Japanese to get a mark!)

e.g. dolce = not amaku (sweetly) but yawarakaku (gently/softly/flexibly)

I thought "NNNNNGGYYYYYEUGH....pant pant pant....aaaagh.....repeat till done" was the same in any language

Me too!

Me too.

I'm learning Japanese, if you have a list of the musical terms handy (or know where I could find one - do ABRSM publish books in Japanese or are there any good theory books/websites in Japanese?) I would be very grateful.

Yes, ABRSM do have the pink and blue theory books in Japanese.

Do you read kanji (without hiragana rubi, that is), or are you more comfortable with romanization? Couple of busy days at work coming up but if you let me know your comfort level, I will look through my lists later in the week.

I like that.

For me, I have a whole vocabulary in French for tennis, electrical/plumbing problems and broken bones that I don't have in English.
A lot of the French/English bilingual kids here though have huge gaps in their English vocabulary for words that they've only studied at French school - i.e. physics terms or grammar terms.
Alternatively, it can be quite a shock to realise that your fluent French speaking 10 year-old doesn't know the French word for 'pillow' because, they just so happen to have never come across it in French situations, only at home in English.

I can read kana and some kanji, I have a dictionary on my DS I can look up readings on if I don't know them. Thanks

Good luck Lemontree.

Or is it Vielen Gluck! (I wish I had an Umlaut.)

The closest experience to this is being in a foreign country and speaking the language of that country to an English person for half an hour before realising we both were English. The other one was being in Denmark (hubby and I don't speak Danish) and wanting to know the opening details of a museum. He read the French, I read the German. Both of us had ascertained the information we needed, then we realised it was written in English too .

You are not alone with funny things happening involving your mother tongue!

Yes, me. I know quite a lot of things in Spanish which I don't know or find hard to remember in English (my native tongue). I wouldn't say I am "better" in Spanish than English, though. I just have a more functional every day musical vocabulary in Spanish.

Funnily enough, it's not necessarily the case with oboe-specific vocabulary. Almost all literature on the oboe seems to be in English so sometimes I pick up words which are hard to translate into Spanish. There isn't an ease way to distinguish between "gouge" and "scrape", for instance (techniques in two different stages of the reedmaking process).

I bought the ABRSM theory books (the same pink and blue ones mentioned in relation to Japanese) in both Spanish and English to hone my bilingual skills. Better than a musical dictionary for seeing how words are used in context.

Oh my. ROFL!

The Umlaut wouldn't work here. As is easiest to demonstrate on my (currently) most often mentioned composer H?ndel. Just some computer gibberish.

Those two stories made my day! They are ingenious examples of the topic!

Thanks for the good luck wishes. I certainly need it. I only pretend to know what I am actually doing.

When I first moved to Italy no-one really had mobile phones (seems ages ago but actually wasn't that long!) so all that sort of language I learnt in Italian. When I first got one I remember saying to my brother "I'll send you an SMS" and he said "actually you say I'll text you in English".

It's not just Italian - my mother and all her (Indonesian) siblings have always irritated me by talking about 'an SMS' rather than a text. They even say 'I'll SMS you'

Also, when we did our tri-lingual orchestra course last summer, the English course organiser (who hadn't met me before) spoke to me in French, which I understood ,for about a minute before I replied 'Would it be easier to speak English?'...